Investigation of surface chemistry and heterogeneous catalysis on metal-oxide nanostructures

Abstract

Development of nanoscience and technology is no longer in the bulk world, but nanoscale materials dominated by surface properties which fall few nanometers from the surface. Moreover, physical and chemical understanding of nano-surface at a fundamental level is important to the semiconductor and catalysis industries as well as provides deep insights into solving energy, environment, and resource problems. Over decades, advances in surface analysis could largely contribute to observing and clarifying changes in surface properties during chemical reactions. Among the prototypical reactions for probing surface active sites of catalytic system, CO oxidation reaction have advantages of evaluating the catalytic performance. Therefore, in this dissertation, development of 2D model systems for the 3D heterogeneous metal/oxide catalysts and investigation of relation between surface and interface properties of metal/oxide nanocatalyst and its catalytic activity under CO oxidation were studied using various surface analysis techniques.